Inside the Ricebowl Part 2: Pyeongchang

Tempurpaedic, I miss you so!

It's 4:40 am and I am sleepless on one of these spiffy heated Korean floors. On one hand, yes! Spiffy! On the other hand... sleeping on the floor is not something I am accustomed to.

We arrived in Pyeongchang two nights ago. I was weary, presumably from a combination of three things: jetlag (still!), my chaotic schedule and as a group our erratic bedtimes (we'd stayed up until 3 on two occasions just talking). We are staying here in an apartment next to the Pheonix Park ski slopes. I was pretty excited upon arrival, "Woo, bedtime!". They showed me my room, I opened the door and then doubletaked. It was a good sized room, but completely devoid of furniture save for something that looks like a coffee table (but probably isn't... we're in Korea!)

"Uhhh... where is my bed?" They searched around for a minute but found bedding in a closet. The sleep pads were folded up, and there were comforters and fluffy pillows. It dawned on me that, yes, I was in Korea. Koreans like the floor. Rather than use their posh Ostrich leather chairs in their apartment in Bundang, the Lee family liked to sprawl out on the heated wooden floors. I could do that, but not all night.

Thus I laid down on what is arguably, the firmest mattress my wimpy, spoiled backside had ever experienced (I've camped on softer ground) and attempted to sleep.

I managed a full night's sleep although here I am, night two and I'm awake at 4:30 am. Probably had something to do with the fact that I went to sleep around 7 pm.

Ugly snow and child magnetism

And now... skiing. We'd rented skis for myself and Jeong Ha, Beechna's older cousin. She's 35 year old Korean opera singer actually. I think it must be the off season. Also appears to act as Beechna and Jae Hyouk's housekeeper some of the time. The skis I have are new, but are the heaviest skis I think I have ever encountered. Wood core, perhaps? They make me crave my weenie little 140's back at home.

In the morning, when I could actually see the mountain, we went out and scoped it out. The snow here is white and gray. The gray is just filth that apparently gets mixed in when they make snow. I don't know... Whiteface can manage to make snow without spewing dirt out of their snow cannons. The slopes looked icy and as such, I was pretty apprehensive. Icy slopes had been the undoing of my anterior cruciate ligament back in March 2000. I didn't want a repeat in March 2008.

As it turns out, what appeared to be ice was pure slush. I skied on some pretty easy trails. This week there's a ski camp here, so the lift lines were littered with 6-10 year old Korean kids. In spite of their lack of knowledge of any English whatsoever, I showed them how to sidestep up the slope to the lift lines and they gratefully chattered away in Korean. The older kids would deliberately ski over to present me their best "hello". I think it's safe to say that of the 300 or so people at Pheonix Park, I was the only native English speaker. Or Western person.

I am tested at every meal...

And probably fail miserably. Koreans eat things that many of your minds cannot even fathom. Fish spawn, for instance. Little veiny nuggets of fish spawn. I am not that brave. At lunch yesterday I was offered a spicy casserole containing cow intestine and tripe. Jae Hyouk said, "It's very expensive in Korea, and delicious!" My saving grace had been that they'd ordered two entrees and the other one was a soup with ramen, glass noodles, kimchi and-- wait for it-- spam! Koreans love the spam. It works, somehow. So I'd dodged the cow organ bullet, but with a minimal amount of grace. I would eat dog meat over strange animal organs, frankly.

Also! We were watching the Korean "Food Network" the other day and they had a segment on how they eat Sea Cucumbers. Jeong Ha was telling me about how delicious it was, but looking at it made me want to spew everywhere. How anybody could conceive of eating that is beyond me. They seem to have an attraction to finding the strangest sea creature in the Yellow Sea or Sea of Japan and then consuming it raw. Oh my god.

Sungsoon (the mom) is going to try to get me a job teaching public school at Beechna's old elementary school in Gangnam. There are four months of vacation each year and the pay is better than at academies. Apparently Korean mothers prefer American females as their teachers and with my teaching experience, I am apparently a hot commodity. Gangnam is not at the top of places I'd like to live... it's part of Seoul and Seoul is tight, noisy and polluted. Sungsoon said though that I could live in Bundang and commute by bus or train very easily. Maybe it's a possibility after all.

Anyway, I should probably try to get some sleep.

Toodloo!